


I'm Like a Bird on a Wire

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Birds, M/M, Peril, Pigeons, animal direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:22:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9623984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Growing up the only pigeon with snowy-white feathers, Harry's always felt like he stood out horribly. When one day he stumbles on another pigeon like himself, it raises questions about who he really is...And why the other pigeon is so against being, well, a pigeon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a prompt challenge that a group of us are participating in for the prompt "Cat". To read the other amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, you can [click here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/cat/works) and to see all fics written as part of the challenge, you can [click here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/2017_hl_prompt_challenge/works).

Growing up, Harry’s mum made sure to tell him every single day that he was beautiful.

She told him first thing in the morning when the sunlight hit the top of the rooftops. She told him in the afternoon as they scattered for bits of what the humans had left behind from their meals at the base of the Stone Lions and the Ponds. She told him as the sun set and she softly preened his feathers.

His feathers. His pale, white feathers. So different from the rest of his family, with their shades of grey and tinges of blue and purple. He grows up with jealously for his sister with her beautiful iridescent plumage ghosting across her neck, reflecting in the morning light, and his mum with her speckled wings. 

He has to work so much harder to keep his feathers clean, the dust immediately showing and making him look like he’s flown through a smokestack. When he was younger he used to do it purposefully – find those thick puffs of smelly air behind lorries and stick close to them until he was covered and dizzy, collapsing on the pavement in a huff and then finding a puddle to admire his reflection. He still never looked quite like the rest of his family, but this was closer.

The second he returned, his mum would chastise him and he would find himself violently preened until his feathers were sparkling again. It was generally a painful process and the combination of that plus the very long speech from his mum about how beautiful he was and how he shouldn’t do this to himself led to him eventually giving up that particular pastime.

He finds that a lot of humans pay him special attention. Some throw him extra food, and a lot of the small ones try to chase him much farther than they’ll chase any of his friends. It can get tiring, to say the least, and Harry has learned to spend quite a bit more time on rooftops and in trees, just to have some peace. 

But, overall, Harry can’t particularly complain about life. There’s always seeds to eat (and often very sweet things dropped by grubby small human hands), and rooves to roost on – what more could he ask for?

-

The first time Harry ever meets another bird like himself, it’s under peculiar circumstances.

He had flown much further than normal one morning, upset about the number of human children who had attempted to follow him and grab at his wings with their stubby little fingers.

Harry had flown low over the river, structures high on both sides, the water a blissful escape. The call of gulls (immoral, godless beings) echoed around him in reproach as he flew through what they considered to be their own territory.

Flying further on, the buildings here not quite as grandiose, he reaches areas with more trees and ivy growing up the sides of the riverbank. 

He likes to fly far when something’s annoyed him; the day his sister pulled out one of his tail feathers he (lopsidedly) flew so far north that he heard the bleats of what he learned were sheep for the very first time. It’s relaxing, being up in the air high above all his problems. 

Just as he grows tired, his anger at the humans faded, Harry begins to hear unfamiliar song. Some of it sounds like the call of gulls, but with a higher pitch, and some like the chirp of morning birds, except slower, sweeter. There are so many voices overlapping it makes him dizzy. Where are they coming from?

Up the slope from the river – a tall, steep, grassy thing - Harry spots what looks like the nets humans used to catch fish – but monumentally taller, and slung among the trees.

On the other side of the net, he sees so many faces and hears so many types of voices that he almost can’t make sense of it all. It’s like a foreign land on the other side of that mesh, and he wants to know more.

He flies up and lands gingerly near the top of the mesh, feeling it sway precariously under his weight. The netting goes on for as far as he can see, separating him from the birds on the other side.

Most of them pay him no heed, acting as though he isn’t even there, and Harry looks around in wonder, seeing so many different vivid colours of plumage that he’s never even known to exist.

And there, between all those vibrant hues, someone catches his eye; a shock of white between the greenery of the branches they’re perched on.

Another white pigeon.

Harry feels his heart stop. Even from this far away, he’s sure this is another pigeon. A white one, _just like him_.

He calls out, timidly at first, his coos barely heard above the songs of these beautiful birds around him.

“Hello!” he calls, to no response. “Hi! Hello! Pigeon! White pigeon?”

He receives no response until the last part, when the other bird’s head shoots up and finds him through the trees.

The pigeon jumps up and flaps through the foliage until he comes face to face with Harry, landing on a branch that snakes between the netting.

“I am _not_ ,” he clacks out, almost biting against the net, “a blooming common _PIGEON_.”

Harry hops back, fluttering his wings so as to not upend himself. “What do you mean you’re not a pigeon?” he asks rather indignantly. “Of course you are!”

“I’m not, I’m _NOT_ ,” the other bird shrieks, and for a seconds he looks like he’s going to attempt a fight – until he eyes the mesh between them. “Pigeons are hideous and common,” the bird declares.

Harry gasps. “How dare you!” he cries and flies claws-first at the other bird. He’s immediately tangled in the netting and goes from angry to scared as his feet become entangled more and more tightly in the mesh. It cuts at his ankles and he lets out a number of high pitched curses, his wings flapping uselessly and only serving to twist him around further.

“Stop moving, _stop moving, you absolute bird-brain!_ ” Harry registers the other bird’s instructions but it’s incredibly difficult to _just stop moving_ when he feels like he’s going to be torn from his feet if he does. 

Still, his wings quickly grow tired, the initial burst of adrenalin wearing off, and, to his supreme embarrassment, he slowly slips lower and lower until he’s hanging by his terribly tied feet.

The other pigeon has simply been watching him this whole time. Waiting for him to tire out, presumably. Now that Harry’s stilled, he hops forward and begins to work at the netting with his beak. After a few minutes of fierce concentration (as Harry unabashedly watches his white feathers sway, fascinated by this stranger), one leg is freed of the mesh, and then the other.

Harry lets out an entirely undignified squawk as he spends a moment freefall tumbling down the side of the net before he’s able to catch his balance and fly his way back up to his previous spot, a little more flapping than graceful gliding as he’s feeling quite vulnerable after that ordeal.

The other pigeon is still perched on the other side of the net, cocking his head to one side and the other. “I can’t believe you did that,” he says, and at first Harry thinks he sounds almost in awe, but then the pigeon follows it up with, “that was so incredibly stupid! Even fledglings know better than to fly at the Wires.”

“The Wires?” Harry asks, confused. “You mean the net?”

The pigeon cocks his head even further. “ _The net_ , he says, Of course I mean the net! Have you not seen the Wires before? 

Harry ruffles his feathers reproachfully. “No, I haven’t,” he says, turning his beak up. “I’m from the Stone Cats, we don’t have Wires over there.”

The pigeon studies him, eyes narrowed. “I’ve never been there,” he says. “But isn’t there Wire everywhere?”

“Of course not!” Harry turns and looks to the river and the ivy and the people floating on their water-houses downstream. “Most of the land doesn’t have Wire, unless the humans are looking for fish.” He turns back to the bird, who is looking almost wistfully in the same direction Harry was. “Why did you say you’re not a pigeon?” 

The pigeon snaps back to him and there’s that snappishness back in his voice when he says, “Because I’m _not_ , I’m a _dove_. Why do you keep asking? You’re a dove too!”

Harry cocks his head and snaps his beak nervously. “I’m not… What’s a dove? You can’t just call yourself something else because you’ve decided you’re not a pigeon!”

The other bird flutters his wings in frustration. “I didn’t just _decide_ , how thick are you? Doves aren’t the same! You and me, we’re different than them!”

Harry rears back, the anger setting in again. “I can’t believe – no! He squawks, his voice rising. “My family are pigeons and I am too! Just because you think you’re – you’re better than us!”

He’s not sure why he ever sat to talk to this stupid bird in the first place. Hopping off the branch he had been perched on, he takes a dive toward the river and stretches out his wings to catch the wind and lift him back toward the Stone Cats. Back where birds aren’t rude and there isn’t Wire and Harry can happily be a pigeon – be _himself_ \- just like everyone else.

-

The unfortunate thing is, Harry finds that he absolutely cannot forget the pigeon from the Wires. It’s almost a week later and he’s perched comfortable on the paw of one of the Stone Lions, and still he can’t forget the things that the pigeon had said,

_Doves aren’t the same. You and me, we’re different than them._

Harry knew he wasn’t different really, but what did he mean? How were they supposed to be different?

These have been the thoughts running through his mind for the past few days, and he thinks he’s going to go absolutely crazy thinking about them any more longer.

So, as he does any time such a crisis hits, he goes to find his mum.

His feet make little _click clack_ sounds as he crosses the stone ground toward where he knows she likes to roost – right in the crook of the metal Horse and Human. He flaps his wings to get off the ground and coasts the last bit to where he sees his mum perched.

“Harry!” she coos in welcome as he settles in comfortably next to her for the gentle preening he knows is coming. “You’re normally out exploring at this time of day, what’s gotten into you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve barely left the Stone Lions all week.”

Harry huffs and lets his ruffled feathers settle. Trust his mum to notice everything. Especially when he’s so easy to spot among the nearly-identical shades of grey all the other pigeons in the area share.

“Mum,” he tells her solemnly, “I’ve met someone, and he told me something that I can’t stop thinking about.”

“And what’s that then?”

“He… he called me a dove.”

What Harry was not expecting was for his mum to let out an absolute squawk of laughter – so different than her generally quite formal, calm nature. 

“Harry, my fledgling, my dear Harry,” she says as she recovers, the mirth still in her eyes. She pulls particularly harshly at a feather as she preens. “My dear baby, I don’t know who exactly you’ve met, but he was quite correct.”

Harry pulls back and looks at her, utterly aghast. “I’m… What do you mean? I’m a pigeon! You’ve always said I was a pigeon!”

Harry’s mum nips the sensitive feathers near his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she reprimands. “I’ve absolutely never told you that you were a pigeon.” Smoothing over the spot she’s ruffled, she continues; “I’ve told you that you’re beautiful. I’ve told you that I love you. I’ve told you to stop teasing your sister and to stop rolling in the smog – thank Owl that phase is over – but I have absolutely never, _never_ told you that you’re a pigeon.”

Stunned, Harry taps his feet against the bronze Horse below them. How… how could he not notice that? But why would be? Everyone around him are pigeons, so why would he have thought differently?

But now… not everyone around him are pigeons now…

“Mum, I have to go,” he says, hopping up and almost overbalancing himself. “I have to – I have to find the dove-“

His mum coos fondly as he all but falls off the side of the bronze Horse in his attempt to take flight.

-

The journey to the Wires takes longer this time, as Harry keeps questioning and doubling back across his path, trying to make sure that he’s not passed it.

In the end, that thought seems ridiculous as he approaches the very loud sound of distinct birdsong. The wires up the side of the bank are just as weird and out of place as Harry remembers them being, although this time as he flutters closer he sees much more excitement going on on the other side than he remembers happening previously.

The wide variety of birds are all trilling, squawking, singing and as Harry nears he sees that they are all gathered at the very tops of the Wires, as close to the top of the net as they can be, and only intermittently jumping between those branches to others just as high.

Of course, having the same instincts as any other bird present, Harry knows this means danger. But danger where? And will he, on the other side of the wires, be safe?

He flies up above the mass of birds, their colours swirling together in his vision and confusing him to no end. Where’s the dove? 

“Dove!” he calls, although his voice is lost among the several dozen below him. “Dove! _Dove!_ ” He trills in frustration, “ _PIGEON!_ ”

One indignant cry is, for only a split second, heard louder than all the others below him. He briefly hears an outraged voice call that he is _not_ a pigeon and – there!

The small fleck of white in the swirl of colour, Harry dives towards it, towards the dove.

He lands just on the other side of the wire. “Hello!” he says excitedly to the agitated dove. “I know! You’re a dove! And I’m a dove too! Isn’t it wonderful?” He could sing, he feels like he’s found a new sort of camaraderie, a new bird to befriend.

The dove looks at him rather distractedly even as he continues to glance around, especially below them to the grassy floor below. “Yes yes,” he says. “But now is not the time, dove.”

“Why?” Harry asks, hopping to and fro across the net, trying to get a view of whatever it is the dove is looking at. “What’s going on? Why is everyone up here? What’s down there, I can’t - _oh!_ ”

There, he’s finally spotted what the dove has been seeing all along, It looks remarkably like the Stone Lions, but this one has no stone involved. 

“He got out from his Wires,” the dove explains. “He’s always watched us, but we were safe on the other side, now-“

The dove cuts off as the mass of birds takes off in different directions, the lion deciding with a roar that shakes the trees that now is as good a time as any to take a jump at them.

Harry tries desperately to follow the movements of the birds, to spot what’s happened to the dove – where is the dove? – and after a frantic moment spots him on a branch rather lower than the other birds. He quickly makes his way over on the other side of the Wire to where the dove has ended up.

“Why don’t you leave?” he asks frantically. “Why aren’t you up higher? You could be _hurt_ -“

“We can’t leave!” The dove all but shouts at him over the chorus of birds. “The wires are in the way!”

Harry has to follow the flock again as the lion takes another leap. When the birds settle again though, he can’t find the dove. Through all the mass of colours he sees absolutely no white – 

Until he looks down. There, on a branch only twice as high as the lion himself, is the little white bundle of feathers

Diving faster than Harry ever thought his wings could carry him, Harry keeps his eye on the dove and prays to Horned Owl that the lion doesn’t spot him. Either of them.

The closer he gets to dove, the more apparent it is that the bird has a wing clearly off in an odd direction, jutting out against his normally flat feathers.

He reaches the same level that the dove is at and tries his hardest not to disrupt things with a very messy, hurried landing. Thankfully, the only one who seems to have noticed is the dove himself, whose head whips around to look at him, eyes clearly wide with fear.

Being on the other side of the Wire feels like a curse now rather than a blessing, because he can’t speak to the dove without being sure of the lion not noticing, and he definitely doesn’t want to draw attention to the two of them.

Or… or does it? Harry’s on the other side of the Wire, he’s perfectly safe (for the moment). The lion’s not going to stop while he’s on the prowl in that little space, unless.

Unless.

Harry flies around the Wires, until he’s a safe distance away from the dove and almost directly in the line of sight of the lion. Landing on a branch much lower than he would have regularly felt comfortable on, he puffs out his feathers and spreads his wings back until he’s almost four times his normal size, and lets out the most intimidating noise he’s ever managed;

_”WHOOO!”_

(Praise the Horned One).

Attracted by the sound, the lion turns and looks him dead in the eye. Harry gulps – he’s never seen anything so terrifying, so feral, in his whole life. Still, he stays. He watches as the lion crouches low and centres its gravity, teeth bared.

He expected it to take more than a single blow, but the lion proves him wrong as his mighty claws shred the netting like it’s nothing more than the crumbling biscuits that humans drop for them. Harry lets out a squawk in fright and leaps straight up, wing beats, he’s sure, that would rival a hummingbird. The lion misses by what feel like a hair’s breadth and continues on through the trees as if Harry is now only an afterthought.

Hopefully that’s all he is.

He takes a moment’s rest on a nearby branch to try to catch his breath, truly understanding the peril he was in now that it’s passed.

His breaths slowing, he sees the birds begin to descend again. And brought back to his mind – the dove!

Through the hole that the lion left behind, Harry flies carefully in the hopes of spotting the dove again. Everything is a little disorienting as he’s only seen this area from outside the Wire, but it doesn’t take too long for him to find the small bundle of white feathers, all curled in on himself except for that poor bent wing.

Harry lands gingerly on the branch next to him, weighing it down and throwing the dove off balance momentarily, clearly not having noticed Harry approaching.

“Hello!” Harry coos. He wants to brush feathers with this dove, now that there’s nothing between them. Would that be wrong?

The dove stares at him. “How did you get here?” he asks eventually. Then, “Where is the lion?”

“Gone!” Harry replies with excitement. “And I came in through the hole it made! Would you like to see? Would you like to see outside the Wire?”

The dove motions to his wing. “I can’t go anywhere with this,” he says bemusedly. 

Harry droops a little. A wing like that could take weeks to heal! “But what about out there? Wouldn’t you like to see my home? The Stone Lions? I’d like to take you there, since we’re both doves! Or is this where doves are supposed to live?”

The dove shakes himself adamantly. “Absolutely not! Doves are not supposed to live here! This is only fit for mice and voles and those horrible bright coloured birds that tell me I’m common.” He puffs out his chest. “I’m _not_ common!”

Harry watches in admiration. “No, you’re definitely not,” he decides. As an afterthought he adds, “And neither am I!”

The dove peers over at him. “No of course you’re not,” he says. “You’re a dove too.” He shuffles closer, so that their feathers are only barely touching. “I’m Louis.”

“Harry,” Harry replies, drawing himself a little closer so that they’re more than brushing. Louis is warm, at least on his uninjured side. “We _should_ leave, though. Can you walk?”

Louis bristles. “Doves don’t-“

“Dove might… sometimes.” Harry cuts him off. “In cases of dire emergency.”

Louis moves his head toward his injured wing. He lets out a slight squawk when he attempts to move it. “You… could be right,” he decides after thinking it over. “But only in cases of most dire emergency.”

-

It takes a very long time to walk along the river. There are many times when Harry wants to stretch his wings and fly ahead, but he knows that would be horrible for Louis to watch when he couldn’t do the same. So the most he does is hop up to a high branch a few times in search of berries for the two of them.

It’s three days before they’re in sight of the Stone Lions. Louis has clearly never seen so many pigeons in his life. He says he’s from South. When Harry asks what South is, Louis clarifies that it’s where there’s lots more sunshine and plants that grow upward on human houses and little purple fruits. He says it’s all rather dreary and he’s very fond of the amount of rain that happens here. Harry hates getting his wings wet unnecessarily. They agree to disagree.

-

The two doves roost happily between the Stone Lions for many years, and they often like to tell the story of their escape from the _real_ lion. 

“He was just as big as this one,” they say.

“With claws the size of your whole body.”

“And teeth that can break through trees.”

They say, “He’s still out there somewhere.”

“He’ll come for you too if you’re not careful.”

“Remember. Just like these stone ones here…”

“But real.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me at [LondonFoginaCup](londonfoginacup.tumblr.com) on tumblr!
> 
> and if you're feeling charitable, here's my [fic post](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/156982821389/im-like-a-bird-on-a-wire-by-ladylondonderry) to reblog!


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